Something Like Love
by Manon
Summary: Eponine makes an unexpected friend.
1. November, 1831

"Just stay away from me. No one wants you here." 

The words are cold, deliberate, unsoftened by exasperation or indifference; they are meant to wound, and Éponine, watching, is suddenly overcome with contempt. _S'pose he thinks he's too good to be civil_. Guttersnipe though she may be, she understands common decency, and this clean-cut young man shows none. 

And the man he addresses seems so inoffensive: scruffy, yes; graceless, yes; but what did he do to deserve that, except to say good-day? 

She leans on the wall of the café, watching him watch the other walk off down the street, and is puzzled by his expression. There is hurt there, but no anger; bitterness, perhaps, but no censure. _Like a kicked puppy_, she muses. It reminds her, incongruously, of her sister. 

Without thinking, she says what she would say to Azelma: "Why d'you let him do that to you?" 

And flinches, as that wins her the reaction the fair-haired boy was spared. "Listen, girl, when I want the public opinion on what I should and shouldn't put up with, I'll ask for it." 

He is younger than she thought, Éponine has time to note before she ducks her head, first line of defense. "'m sorry, m'sieur, it ent my business--" 

"Damned right." 

Like a kicked puppy, taking it out on the first kitten who crosses his path. She lets a note of irony creep in. "--But I just was wondering, m'sieur, why anybody'd let someone talk to him like 'at, and out here in the street too." 

Darting a look upward, she sees the anger fading from his face, replaced by a sort of sullen apathy. "Go to hell," he says tiredly. "You don't know." 

"No, I don't," she admits, studying him through her lashes. "S'why I asked." 

"Well, you'll have to wonder, won't you." 

He turns away sharply. Éponine hesitates, then pushes away from the wall and jogs after him, catching at his sleeve. "Look--" 

"What now?" He doesn't bother trying to dislodge her. 

"Where are you going?" 

"Nowhere, if it's any of your business." 

"Why go anywhere? This is a nice place, don't let that boy tell you to go, he don't own the place. I know the one who does, he's a fine fellow. He'll give me a penny, sometimes... No reason you should go anywhere." She hears the cajoling note in her own voice, the idiotic soothing phrases, and again wonders why she's talking to this stranger as though he were Azelma. "Besides, it's going to rain." 

"Gamine," says the young man, looking down at her with amused brown eyes, "why do you give a damn?" 

Éponine blinks at him, floored. She says the first thing that comes into her head: "Because I hate a snob." 

He stares. Then, perversely enough, he breaks out into laughter. She flushes, ducking her head again, but finds herself smiling in spite of herself. 

"You don't mince words, do you?" 

"No." She looks up at him again boldly, taking in the crooked, honest lines of his face. "Don't see why I should, not for no pretty boy. Dressed that nice he ought to 'ave better manners." 

The young man grimaces, as though it were himself she's just chastised; but his voice is mild, now. "Ah... well. I'm not much for manners myself." Then, with a lopsided grin, "And neither, apparently, are you." 

"Hunh," Éponine says, and then, as the rain begins to spatter down, "Tol' you, din't I." 

"Proving my point." 

"'Least I've enough sense to come in out of the _rain_, m'sieur." 

"And hammering it home." 

They grin at each other, suddenly in perfect accord. 

"Catch your death," Éponine observes after a moment. 

"Not likely." 

"You best go in." 

"No, I'm going home." The young man hesitates, then digs a coin out of his pocket and flips it at her, not contemptuously, but lightly, as though it's part of a game. She catches it reflexively. "That's for the drink I didn't have," he says. "I expect you can put it to better use." 

She snorts. "How d'you know I won't drink it myself?" 

"Do what you want, girl. I don't care." He starts up the street again. 

"My name's Éponine," she calls after him, half irked, half amused. Girl, indeed! 

"Mine's Grantaire," he calls back. "Doesn't keep the rain off." 

Éponine knots the coin in a corner of her skirt, unable to keep from grinning. "All right, I ent keeping you." 

The young man sketches a precarious bow, catches his balance on a streetlamp, and disappears around the corner. 


	2. January, 1832: Night

After that, it is a bleak winter. The encounter fades to the back of Éponine's mind, like other bright things, as she braces herself for survival. She wraps her callused feet in rags, lets her hair fall loose and matted around her shoulders. On the coldest days she puts her fingers in her mouth to keep them from freezing. "You look like a half-wit," her father says in disgust. 

Once she fights with a cluster of other girls for a tattered shawl some shopkeeper's wife has thrown out. She wins, because most of them are smaller and weaker; but three days later she gives the shawl to Azelma, who forfeits it in turn to an older girl who leaves scratch marks on her cheek. 

"Can't trust you with nuffin," Éponine mutters, dabbing the blood away. "Oh, dammit, don't _cry_. Never mind. We'll find you another." 

"What's that brat whining about now?" The door of the garret opens and shuts with its customary clatter. Éponine looks up warily. 

"Nuffin, papa." 

"If it's nothing, she can shut up." 

"I'm bleeding," Azelma whimpers. "I lost 'Ponine's shawl and now I'm bleeding." 

He turns his back on them, drops heavily into the chair. "Well, that was stupid of you, wasn't it?" 

Azelma begins to cry a little harder. Éponine shakes her shoulder. "Come on, Zelma. You'll mend. Leave off." But now their mother is making vague sympathetic noises from the corner, and Azelma, caught up in her misfortune, lapses into sobs. 

"Damn the wench! I'll give her something to cry about in half a minute--" 

"Goddamn, papa, it's not her fault." 

"You watch your mouth." 

"What am I, a fine lady?" Éponine laughs in spite of herself. "That's what I love, the way we're supposed to be respectable. Beggars an' housebreakers, but I have to watch my mouth." 

Her father gives her a scalding look. "Shut up. --_Woman, keep your brat quiet!_" 

Azelma wails. Éponine moves, more out of instinct than from any sympathy with her sister, and her father's fist connects with her jaw, knocking a gasp out of her. "Shit!" For an instant she is blind with pain. As her eyes clear, she glimpses maman, gathering Azelma into a protective embrace. It's been years since her mother held her like that. 

Her father is snarling. "Stupid, mewling, useless bitches, all of you--" 

"Useless my precious hind end. If we've 'ad anything to eat this week, it was my doing, so don't give me 'useless', sweet papa." 

"Quiet, you." 

"Said what I had to say." Éponine spits, experimentally, but no teeth come out. "And I won't say any more, but it's no good smacking Zelma. She's been smacked already." 

"Quiet," her father says again, but the murder has gone from his eyes. "You're an impudent little hussy. Get out of here. If you're so useful, go prove it." 

"It's snowing out there," her mother protests. 

Éponine gives them a level look: papa cold and smug, maman frowning, Azelma sniveling into her hands. At the moment she loathes them all. "I don't care." She turns away, steadying herself against the wall until the room stops swaying, and pads out into the hall. 

She could probably pick up a handful of small change, standing ragged and bruised and plaintive in the snow; but she is still too infuriated for that. Let them go to the devil! Let papa lower himself to find real work for once, let Zelma go out and sit on the corner whinging for charity. 

Éponine stomps along for a block or two, kicking up slush at every step, then reverts to her habitual slinking gait. For more than an hour, she wanders, letting her exasperation dissipate into the cold. She hardly notices the moment when she stops. 

Night has fallen. The street around her is unlit; looking up, she can see a few stars in the narrow strip of sky. She has no clear idea where she is, and no strength left just now to find her way home. With a sigh, she sits down in a darkened doorway, hugging her knees, and listens to the long, cold sound of the wind blowing over the roofs. 


	3. January, 1832: Midnight

She is woken sometime after midnight by a kick in the ribs and a curse. Gasping, she scrambles up, and finds that she is still in the doorway. Her assailant is only a half-drunk stranger, who has tripped over her. He backs off a step as she climbs to her feet. "Sorry," he mutters.

Éponine rubs her eyes. "You want to watch where you put those boots of yours. I dunno where they've been."

He laughs briefly, starts to move past her, then stops. "Here, it's you again. What's your name, Aveline--"

"Éponine."

"What are you doing here?"

She stares at him for a minute before she places him: the boy from the café in the Place St. Michel, what did he call himself? Grantaire. "Sleeping. Or was."

"In the doorway."

Idiot. "Oh no, in the best bedroom. I'm just takin' the air out here." Éponine pushes her hair back from her eyes and glowers at him, but Grantaire seems immune to sarcasm. He grins at her lopsidedly.

"I'll bet you were."

"Right."

"Shall I show mademoiselle inside, then?" He offers an arm, with slightly wobbly ceremony, and Éponine glowers.

"I ent for hire to a schoolboy with two left feet."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself, I wasn't offering. If I wanted a girl, I could find one who's had a bath a bit more recently. Go on. 'S freezing out here."

Éponine surveys him with a jaded eye. She gets these from time to time, earnest university boys who lace their charity with laborious camaraderie, or even more laborious good manners. Honestly she prefers the louts who grope her in alleys; at least they don't prolong the agony. She considers, briefly, telling him to go to hell, but decides that it's too cold. "All right."

Grantaire nods gravely, and opens the door. Éponine tramps in after him, her toes curling at the feel of the smooth wooden floor. It is not precisely warm, but the absence of wind and snow is a comfort in itself. In a slightly more friendly frame of mind, she follows him up the stairs.

"Got no business snowing, anyway," he mutters. More than half-drunk, maybe. "Been enough of it already this winter, must be near the end of the reserves. Even God can't have an infinite supply of the stuff stashed away in his cellar. Think of the expense."

He fumbles in his pocket for a minute, comes up with a key, and fits it, with some difficulty, into the lock. The door swings open on darkness. "Mind the excavations," he says.

"What?" Éponine is baffled for a moment; then her foot snags on something, and Grantaire barely catches her before she goes sprawling to the floor. "Hellfire."

"There," he says. "Great men perish, but their words survive to bite you on the ankle, as I swear I'd like to do to them sometimes. Hold on, let me get a light..." There's a window, Éponine perceives as her eyes adjust to the darkness, but it doesn't illuminate much. She watches as he lights the candle, half expecting him to set fire to the place in the process. "There. You all right?"

"Fine."

The light reveals clutter: books, clothes, tossed carelessly on the floor and the furniture. She can feel her stomach tighten with envy. But Grantaire turns back to her with a look of vague apology.

"Not much for entertaining at home," he says wryly. "Bed's over there, it's just hiding. God, don't look so horrified. I won't bother you. I said."

As if she's got any virtue to lose. "I'll get your sheets dirty."

"They already are."

"I c'n sleep on the floor."

"Only if you can find it. Go on, would you?"

__

All right, all right, I won't spoil your good deed. Éponine is too tired to argue. She shuffles across the room and sits down, self-conscious, on the edge of the bed. She kicks off the remnants of her shoes, and glances over, defensive; but Grantaire has the grace to be paying no attention. With a sigh, she stretches out; the bed is softer than it looks.


End file.
